Project Happy - Dev Diary 7

Well better late than never.
Missed two Sundays. Not so good.
Well I ended up getting pretty sick and then I got a bit stuck with the game.
BUT! I have taken the rest of this week off so I will be working on the game a lot this week which is indeed very needed if I still want the game to be finished around the 12th of June.

So my last task was to make the game run well on Android and I have definitely managed that.
I ended up stripping off a lot of the cool effects and scaling back on some of the models and textures. I found out that the terrain was causing a very high poly count and so was the water. The fade out effect of the trees when you go behind them also seemed to cause the fps to drop dramatically.
What remains that is really expensive rendering wise is the drop shadows and the light cookie (the effect of light coming through tree branches. I think I'll end up with no shadows. This is a shame, but the game still looks OK as long as the light cookie is there.

Other than all the optimization stuff I:

• Implemented the Triceratops.
• Setup a start menu, pause menu and game over menu.
• Made some better UI textures.
• Implemented a point counter.
• Made sand textures for the terrain.
• Made a temporary sky box.

And here is how it is looking at the moment:

So I might have scaled back the graphics a bit too much, but I can always put stuff back in if I have the performance headroom.

So for the week I will have to be very productive if I'm going to finish this off soon:

• Make a velociraptor.
• Make tourists you can eat.
• Make eggs you can collect.
• Make missing animations.
• Make a real skybox.
• Decide on a Final name
• Finish all the UI.
• Probably way more stuff

So if I manage all this in this week then I'll have next week to polish things off and implement Play Games services and in app billing.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it :P.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 6

So another week has gone by.

I feel this week ended up being a bit unproductive.

I did not manage to create quite as many new assets as I had hoped.

I started the week out working on textures and had a bunch of problems making as good ground textures as I wanted, so I have added two a rock one and a grass one, I'm not very pleased with either, but I learned a lot, so hopefully I'll be able to make improvements.

I then did the Triceratops and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I haven't yet rigged it or anything, but I have the model in the game and it is looking good.

I then made a texture to use for the bottom of the screen to indicate not to go farther down and I made a new big tree model to block off the top of the map.

I also got rid of the block rocks I've been using and just used the terrain with my new rock texture, this is OK for now and I think will work fine when I get some boulders in there that I can spread around a bit.

I also played a bit around with the light.

And here is how it's looking at the moment.

Goals for next week:

• Get game to run well on Android

At the moment the game does not run great on my Nexus 5. I don't know if it is due to texture sizes or polygon counts or something completely different, but I believe I have to figure it out before I work on any more assets. Hopefully I'll be able to do a few more things as well.

See you all next week.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 5

So another week has gone by and I've made quite a few improvements.

I got the game back to being playable with a game-over screen and that you get energy from eating. The stegosaurus' are re-spawning after you eat them.
And I've hugely improved the T-rex animation. I redid the walk animation and did a running animation and an attack animation and I have the all set up in a working blend tree.
The stegosaurus now runs away scared when it sees you.
I added some grass and modeled the tree log.
And as you can see I have ugly (but functional) touch controls on it now.

And here you can see it in action:

Goals for next week:

• Model the triceratops
• Model the cliffs
• Model the big trees blocking the top
• Make different better textures for the terrain

I plan to focus this next week on getting rid of all the blocked in stuff so I really get an idea of hold the game will look and hopefully I'll have time to do a few more things as well.

See you all in another week

Project Happy - Dev Diary 4

Today is my 30th birthday!

And it is going well with the project.
I managed to get quite a few things done this week.
I created a tree and a fern for the game, which has really improved the visuals.
I got some animation working on the stegosaurus.
And I figured out using Unity's navigation system for character control and AI.

The AI is still very simple. At the moment the stegosaurus is just selecting a location and moving towards it and when it get there, choosing a new location. This will of course be improved with other actions the dinosaurs can take and reacting to the player. But I am getting all the nice path finding etc.

Here is a video showing off the stegosaurus sped up and highlighted to show their behavior.

And here you can see it being played. I've sped up the player a bit to be able to cover more gound, but you get the idea.

So another productive week. So for next week I really want to work on the gameplay and logic so:

• Get game playable again. You loose health and have to eat dinosaurs to survive etc.
• Make herbivores act better. Run away from player etc.
• Plan out and implement some simple menus.

See you all in a week.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 3

So everything slipped a bit and I didn't manage to get this blog post written yesterday.

But everything is going well. I have been a bit sick this last week, but I managed to put in some good work anyway I think.

Firstly I modeled the real tyrannosaurus model.

Full resolution:

Low resolution in game:

I then spent a disturbing amount of time figuring out how to properly rig a character. I've never done this properly and it took a very long time. After this I made the following test:

After that I ran around in circles for a while trying to figure out how to best import animations and how to set up root motion.

Finally I sort of figured it out and made a walk animation and an idle animation and got them working with root motion in the game and here is the result:

Additionally after thinking more about the game. I've decided to drop the idea of growing bigger as you eat. You will simple have to eat as much as possible so you don't die and then you earn points of some kind that you can unlock bigger dinosaurs with. This will mean I will have to make more different dinosaurs though.

So everything is going pretty well. This next week I want to really start working on getting the game playable and fun. So I'm going to concentrate on getting enough animation for the T-rex and one herbivore and then work on the player controller and the AI for the herbivores.

• Make run animation for T-rex.
• Rig and skin stegosaurus.
• Make, idle, walk and run animation for the stegosaurus.
• Make a herbivore controller so stegosaurus can run around the landscape.
• Make T-rex able to eat them etc.

See you in another week :)

Project Happy - Dev Diary 2

So it's Sunday again (actually early Monday) and where are we with project Happy?

I have been trying to plan out the rules and think about game on a higher level reading through some of The Art of Game Design again. But I haven't really nailed down the design yet, but I did get a bit more of an idea of the game.

I made a drawing of a simple landscape I could start out with:

I then did some research on making terrain in Unity and using some of the standard textures and some primitives build this little map. As you can see I went for no trees thinking it would be a pain with the camera colliding with them etc. But it turned out to be easier than I though to hide part of a tree when the camera collided with it. You can see this in the video test at the end of the post.

I then started doing a bit of modeling of the Triceratops and the Stegosaurus and after a short while I realised how nice it would be to have a three dimensional reference. And then it hit me: Dinosaur toy figurines! I went to a local euro store and for €4:50 I got these three (Yeah I know one is a velociraptor, not a Tyrannosaurus, but that was all they had for some reason).

I then got a bit sidetracked. I just wanted some simple models for the Triceratops and Stegosaurus, but I ended up basically taking the Stegosaurus to final quality because it was so fun to work on.

High resolution model:

And the low resolution model in game with normal map:

And here is how it currently plays. Basically there is no gameplay at the moment, you can just move around, and not very well. Since I'm pushing the player around with the rigid body it feels like you are controlling a rolling ball rather than a character, so I'll have to get that set up correctly. But you can get a bit of an idea and see the nice triceratops in the game and the test trees that are hiding when the camera gets to close.

Tasks for second week:

• Make the real Tyrannosaurus model.
• Make idle, walk and run animations for the T-Rex and implement them in game making the character move correctly.  
• Start looking into AI for the other dinosaurs.
• Keep working on finalizing the game design.

See you all in a week.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 1

Introducing my new project. Codename "Happy" at the moment. This will be my first game developed in Unity and my first 3D game. I have decided on what direction I'm going in and done some prototyping.

Here is a video showing a prototype with the basic gameplay idea:

So the game is similar to Spore or Hungry Shark. You are a small dinosaur and to grow bigger you have to eat other dinosaurs, but be careful of dinosaurs bigger than yourself. The game will be for android and using a virtual directional pad for controls.

I'm hoping to keep the scope pretty reasonable with only three or four dinosaurs on release and have the landscape you move around be pretty small. I can always expand it later.

I've set up a rather ambitious development schedule:

12/04/2015 - Alpha development

26/05/2015 - Beta. Functionality lock, start serious testing / polish

12/06/2015 - Release date

Hopefully this is doable. I'm planning to try and spend as much as my free time as possible on this for the next two months to make it happen.

Tasks for the first week:

• Plan out all the game interactions
• Skim through The Art of Game Design and ensure game has a decent Aesthetics, Mechanics, Technology and Story balance.
• Plan out the size of the game world and get a simple landscape working in Unity with the prototype dinosaur running around in it..

The plan is to follow up here on the blog every Sunday with the progress on last weeks tasks and a new set of goals.

Post Space Sheep Update

So I released Space Sheep two weeks ago and it has been great to release another game, even if it is not doing very well at the moment.

The game has only been downloaded 21 times at the moment. But there are several reasons for this.

Since I released Jungle Jumper it seems it has become way more difficult to get visibility in the Google Play Store when you launch a new app. I thought there was a lot of spammy games filling it up back then, but it has become way worse.

I have not been able to display house ads in Jungle Jumper about Space Sheep like I had hoped to. The reason being that Admob has been updated and I need to implement the new SDK before this can happen. The problem with that is, that I have still not gotten around to updating Jungle Jumper to libGDX like I had planned and it will just be a lot of unnecessary work if I updated the Admob SDK, that I would have to do again after the update to libGDX.

I've also not been able to get much free PR. When I released Jungle Jumper, there were quite a few places that were willing to show off the game on their homepage / blog, but a lot of these places have closed or changed their policies. However www.playandroid.com is still doing reviews for free and are doing a review of Space Sheep that will hopefully be out soon.

It's a bit sad that I've gotten so few downloads, but I'm still really happy that I managed to get a second game finished and published, even if it is just a little silly game and I feel way more motivated to finish more games and get more serious with the PR.

So with all that in mind here is my plan for the near future:

• Quickly update Jungle Jumper to libGDX. No real improvements or new features, just running on the new engine and new Admob SDK.
• Do an Amazon version of Space Sheep with Amazon IAB and leaderboards rather than Google Play.
• Finish the sailing game. I've shown this game of earlier, it is quite far along and I should be able to finish it in the near future, at the moment the working title is "Jorvis and the Sea Rats"
• Acquire an iOS test device and start working on iOS versions of my games.
• Start working on my new game which I plan to be a 2D platformer.

In other news I've updated Space Sheep, fixing a few bugs and improving the graphics and there is now a web version available on my homepage. Try it here: www.lonelygiantgames.com/space

That is all for now. Hopefully there will be lot of updates in the near future.

Space Sheep

Tadaaa! I finally managed to finish and publish a game. Its not really all that great a game, but atleast I finished it.

Download it on Google Play! 

Just a little update

The Pirate Game

It's been a bit over a month since I announced the new game and it's been going really well since. There is still a lot left to do, but it is really shaping up. Expect an update with a new video soonish.

New Frontiers Program

I mentioned I was applying for a business grant, I have since heard back and I unfortunately did got go forward in the process. I'm not too surprised about this, but still a little sad. For now it just means that I'm putting all my energy into getting the Pirate Game finished. I can of course always apply again next time they are open for applications.

Oculus Rift

Since I posted about buying the Oculus Rift a lot has happened. Oculus VR announced the second development kit and were then bought by Facebook. I like many had a negative first reaction to this. I didn't really think that Facebook would require you to log on to use the headset or anything that drastic, but it was a company that I really like and admire being bought up by a giant corporation that I really dislike. It was more a feeling of loss over having lost a good friend to a bad crowd, than a real worry about the future of virtual reality. It seems now that the future of virtual reality is more certain than ever, within a years time we will probably see the consumer product and at the same time Sony has entered the race.

I haven't used my own Rift as much as I would have liked. I really have enjoyed playing around with it, the experience truly is unlike anything else, but using it is a bit off a hassle. I end up getting the lenses fogged up very easily and using the rift together with my 2 other screens means constantly changing my screen setup as my Nvidia card cannot handle 3 outputs simultaneous. It's silly things I know, especially when the experience is as cool as it is and this is of course still a development kit and I think they will have done a lot to improve these things by the time the consumer product arrives.

I don't think I'll end up buying the second development kit, not for any lack of wanting, but it seems the final product is not too far away and I don't really have the time to try and develop anything for it at the moment. And I do believe I'll need to upgrade my hardware for when the consumer edition comes and I do not have unlimited resources.

That's all for now. I'll try to get back to posting a bit more consistently here. And after the release of the Pirate game I plan to start doing revenue reports again.

Jorvis Goes to Sea

Presenting my new game, which still doesn't have a title, for now I will just call it the Pirate Game.

I've been working on this game since the beginning of the year more or less and it is starting to shape up. There is still a lot to do and the game is full of temporary graphics at the moment. But the core of the game is beginning to settle in.

Here is a little video of how it looks so far:

I hope to have game finished within a month or two. But it all depends on how much time I will be able to put into it.

Back on the Horse

It's been a while since my last update and I'm happy to say that there are lots of news.

New Game

I've been working a lot on a new game and it's really beginning to shape up. I'll make another post presenting the game with some images and a video later tonight or tomorrow.

New Frontiers Program

I've applied for the New Frontiers program here in Dublin. New Frontiers is a program to help technology oriented start-ups. Next month I will know whether I get into phase 1 of the program which will last around two months and include evening classes where you learn more about managing your start-up. After phase 1 there is a chance to be accepted into phase 2 which includes a 6 month grant to help you spend your full time on your start-up. I don't know how difficult it is to get accepted in to either phase, but I'm extremely excited about having applied.

Oculus Rift

Yesterday I ordered an Oculus Rift development kit. I'm super excited for this to arrive so I can play around with it. I have to admit that I bought it mostly because I wanted to play around with it, but I hope to also try and develop a bit for it.

New Job

I ended up changing jobs again very quickly and this time I'm very happy where I've ended up. I'm now working at Dell as a Server Supporter. The job has good pay and benefits and I work together with two good friends from my IBM time. The job is also technically challenging and gives a lot of opportunity for bettering myself.

That's all for now. but a big update on the new game will be coming up very soon.

50.000 Jungle Jumper players

Jungle Jumper got past 50.000 downloads on Google Play today.

I don't know how big a percentage of Android games get to 50.000 downloads, but it feels like a pretty big achievement for my first ever game.

Not much more to say other than... This is pretty cool.

June Report

And the June report makes its late entry. Lets get down to business.

Total installations end of June 2013:

Google Play	48,203	+7,797
GetJar	???	+???
Amazon	1,511	+323
Handster	696	+56
TOTAL:	???	+???
Active installations end of June 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	11,631	+419
Admob stats June 2013:
Impressions	318,221	-23,263
eCPM	$0.38	+$0.02
CTR	0.81%	+0.04%
REVENUE	$122.32	-$0,15

Conclusion:

The numbers from June were very similar to the ones from May. I implemented Google Play games services in the game and I think that is awesome, but it did not improve my download numbers at all. This is obviously not the $400 which has been my next goal for a while now, but I'm hopeful for several reasons. The reason for the missing numbers is that GetJar's developer console is down. I'll go back and fill in the remaining data when it is back up.

Next:

My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll keep my next month goal on $400 until I reach it.

So I think that Jungle Jumper is more or less done, it will keep earning a bit, but I really don't think it will suddenly start downloading and earning like crazy. I will keep improving the game, but I think it's safe to assume that it's glory days are behind it. Jungle Jumper will however be passing it's 50,000 download mark on Google Play very soon which is a bit exciting.

It's all about new games... I've talked about working on other games and one in particular several times, but I still don't have anything to show for it. I can only say that I've had very little time for it and that I have not really hit upon the right recipe for my next game.

But my situation is changing, I should be getting considerably more time to work on my games soon and there are several other things going on that will hopefully make it easier and make my games better.

I'm not going to go into any details because I'll be doing a big status update about it all in a few days.

It looks like July will be a really bad month and that I won't make it past $100 which is quite sad since that will be a first since getting above it. Maybe it's all the nice weather making people go outside and play in real life. But I'll keep my $400 goal just to spite everyone :).

Jungle Jumper 1.30 - Google Play games services

Jungle Jumper 1.30 is out, or will be very soon at least. I finally managed to get an online leader board implemented in there by using Google Play games services.

If you're wondering why I didn't mention this in my monthly report, it is because I didn't know I would get to do any work on Jungle Jumper. I've just had a weeks vacation and it turned out I suddenly had the energy and time to do some really productive programming at the end of it.

I've wanted to have an online leader board from the moment I made Jungle Jumper, but I've been hesitant to implement other peoples' middle ware to do it. I was seriously looking at doing a Facebook integration, but it never really felt right.

Then Google announced Google Play games services at Google I/O and it seemed all my prayers had been answered. It took me quite a bit of time to figure out how exactly it all worked, but when I finally did, it turned out to be a very simple implementation (good work Google). The leader board looks good and the login flow is easy and problem free. I also set up five online achievements and that part is looking good too.

I'm really excited to see how many people will log in and how high peoples' scores will be and whether it will make more people play.

I actually fixed a lot of other small issues with this update and I believe that I got rid of the rendering bug that has been plaguing the game ever since update 1.2.

April Report

Here we have the report for April. Sorry it's a bit late, it's not quite as fun to write the report when you do not reach your goals as when you do :P.

Total installations end of April 2013:

Google Play	30,941	+10,671
GetJar	29,463	+4,322
Amazon	943	+161
Handster	609	+62
TOTAL:	61,956	+15,216
Active installations end of April 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	10,092	+1,836
Admob stats April 2013:
Impressions	450,111	+19,718
eCPM	$0.44	-$0.13
CTR	0.86%	+0.03%
REVENUE	$199.29	-$70,39

Conclusion:

April was a bit of a let down compared to March. Downloads went down, impressions went down, and the big reason for the downturn in revenue, the eCPM went down. My goal for this month was of course $400 so I didn't even hit half of that. I can't control the eCPM of course, but the downloads have gone down rather than up. I'm not completely sure why. GetJar really seems to be loosing a lot of steam and Google Play has lost quite a bit as well. I think part of it was my bad judgement In-App Billing update which is now luckily over and done with.

Next:

My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll set next months goal at $400 again. I don't really think I will reach it, I might not even reach $200 as the game still is doing poorly, but things might turn around.

I need to make another update to Jungle Jumper to get rid of the bug that is plaguing it and causing quite a few bug reports, but I'm spending all my programming time on my new game at the moment. And after my two last updates which really haven't added much of value I would like the next update to actually add some content to the game.

That content might come in the form of the infamous high score system that I've never gotten in there. I hear rumours that Google will be announcing a game platform for multi-player and social aspects for Google Play and if they do that I would love to use that system as opposed to a Facebook implementation. We should know more about that soon at Google I/O on May 15.

New game! I'm still not ready to disclose anything on my new project. But it is going really well, it will however not be coming out in May so it won't have any impact on this month.

House Cleaning

This update will be a bit of a housecleaning, so bear with me if it is a bit rambling.

Jungle Jumper 1.23

So I didn't get around to doing a post when I did the 1.23 update a week ago. It wasn't a huge update, I just removed In-App Billing, fixed a texture and set the AdMob banner to only show on the game screen. So I'm really pleased I removed the In-App Billing, it was a mistake to put it in their in the first place and I already sleep better at night. I have wanted to only have the AdMob banner show up on the game screen from the beginning, but I've never really been able to figure out how to do that. It turned out to be very easy and it makes the game seem way more professional that the ad is not blocking the title of the game in the menu.
Jungle Jumper is not doing so great though, it's not being downloaded at all as much as it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully it will go back up again. This means that I won't be meeting my $400 goal this month which is a bit of a shame, but that's fine.

There is a Bug in my Soup

So there is a nasty bug in Jungle Jumper that is causing around 10 crash reports a week. The bug seems to have been introduced after update 1.2. But I didn't realise it was their until a few days ago because I had hidden the bug early on as I thought it was a one time issue. The problem is that the stack traces don't really tell me anything other than that it is a rendering issue. I'm guessing that I made a mistake with all the improved graphics. It looks like I'll simply have to go through my renderer class and clean up all the code and hope it makes a difference.

Portfolio

You might have spotted that an extra tab has appeared on my blog. There isn't much in there yet, but I plan to have it bursting with links and images for different projects down the road.

Sick

So I've been pretty sick the last couple of days and have had to stay home, it seems I've gotten influenza and I'm coughing like a chain smoker. It has however been a bit of a blessing in disguise as I have been able to sit and program a bit, which leads me to my next point...

A New Dawn

I've finally gotten started on my new game. I'll play it close until I'm a bit further along, but I can say that it is going really well and that I now have a really nice alpha version of it, that looks like crap, but has the basic game play elements in it and is already quite fun. Hopefully I'll be able to share some more info about it and possibly some screenshots soon.

Iron Man 3

So I warned you I was going to be rambling a bit and I just wanted to mention how excited I am for the next Iron Man movie. I'm planning on going too see it on Friday with my better half if I'm well enough. So far I'm hearing very good things about it, such as people comparing it to The Dark Knight movie.

Feedback

So I'm beginning to get a decent amount of traffic here on the blog and I'm wondering if I have any regulars out there. If I do please write a comment, I'd love to hear whether anyone finds my ramblings of any interest and whether there is anyone in a similar start up situation who gets any info out of my monthly reports. Any feedback would be very welcome.

Jungle Jumper 1.22 is out

I put up the new update yesterday here's what's in it:

Improved jungle vine texture: The jungle vine texture has always been a bit crappy and blurry, now it is sharp and crisp :).

Improved spider texture: The spider texture was also a bit poor, I redrew each frame and made it a bit more nasty looking with some fur. I also added an image for when the spider is dead. Before a vertically mirrored image was simply used.

Improved chameleon texture: Much the same as the spider. The lines were not as sharp looking as I wanted so it had a once over and I think it improved quite a bit.

Implemented In-App Billing: There now is a button at the bottom of the screen saying "Remove Ads" and if you press it you are asked to pay a one time $1 to remove ads. We'll see if this works better than my paid version of the game.

Other: I cleaned up a bunch of code, which is always nice.

Conclusion

This update ended up being quite a bit smaller than I had planned. I had a bunch of things I wanted to put in there, but when I have as little time as I do at the moment to program, it very easily becomes difficult to keep track of a lot of different changes that are halfway implemented. I'll try to keep the updates smaller.

I'm not really sure what the next update will be, there are lots of things that I want in the game. The music, a new world for Jorvis to explore and maybe some silly extra costumes that you can buy through the In-App Billing. Not to mention the elephant in the room. The Facebook implementation to get a high-score system.

At the same time I also really want to get another game out. So much to do and so little time ;).

March Report

Here we have the report for March.

Total installations end of March 2013:

Google Play	20,270	+11,983
GetJar	25,141	+10,488
Amazon	782	+174
Handster	547	+64
TOTAL:	46,740	+22,909
Active installations end of March 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	8,256	+5,941
Admob stats March 2013:
Impressions	469,829	+211,422
eCPM	$0.57	+$0.16
CTR	0.83%	+0.04%
REVENUE	$269.65	+$162,58

Conclusion:

March was an incredible month. I did not think it likely that I would reach my $200 goal, but I far exceeded it. I didn't do any updates. The only thing I really did was to update the description on Google Play, which seems to have really had an effect.

Next:

My long time goal is still $2000 so I can make a full time living of it. Next month's goal will be $400 dollars. Which seems pretty possible, if the game keeps doing this well and possibly improves a bit when I update it. Which I hope to do very soon. What I really need is more games, but that seems very far away at the moment. I'm simply not getting enough work done. I have way too little time for it, being back in a full time position at work. I'm hoping that I can maybe take a week of work and work full time on the games and get my next game into shape.

I still have not managed to get the Facebook implementation to work, so I have taken it out for the moment, hopefully it will return for the next update. The big features in the new update, will be a few improved textures and an In-App Billing button to remove the ads for 1$.

I also found out that the game no longer works on Android 1.5 and 1.6. This was because of Google Analytics. I have remedied this issue, which is why I want this update out soon so It works correctly again.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Just a little update of how it's going with Jungle Jumper.

I haven't gotten any work done on the update recently, what little free time I've had recently I've been spending with my girlfriend and on playing games a bit - something I haven't really done in about a year (the game playing part, not the spending time with my girlfriend - she's patient, but not that patient).

I did however spend a bit of time updating Jungle Jumper's description on Google Play. I read up on how to make Apps more searchable on Google Play. They mentioned repeating search words and making sure that popular words were in the description.

I really didn't want to put in a line of comma separated search tags as I have seen some people do. That seems amateurish and everyone is just putting in the names of all the popular games.

Instead I made sure that the title of the game was repeated a few more times in the text and then I included quotes about what people had said about the game. Especially DroidAppOfTheDay.com had a long nice description of how the game was similar to Temple Run and Agent Dash.

This was apparently a very good idea ... My daily download numbers from Google Play have gone from around 100 per day to around 600 per day. This has also meant that the game has gotten a bunch more +1s and reviews on Google Play and that I'm earning quite a bit more money every day. At the moment I'm earning $5-10 per day and yesterday I earned $12.22.

The game also came past 10,000 downloads on Google Play a few days ago and is now on 13,730. It looks like I might make my $200 goal for this month, but we will see in ten days time.